New Algorithm to Plug Land Registry Gap for Developers

By Christopher Rowland-Smith 09th October 2018

A revolutionary, deep-learning algorithm has been developed to identify and uncover more than 1.1m extra residential titles missing from HM Land Registry, which is approximately 4.6% of all residential properties across England and Wales.

The specialist AI technology is the brainchild of Lumiere Property, a south-east based proptech company, who are using their unique geospatial algorithms to identify gaps in Land Registry data and examine the planning potential of sites for development.

According to Lumiere Property, it has only been mandatory to register all land transactions since the late 1990s and HM Land Registry only has 85% coverage of the land in England and Wales but by 2030 it aims to have all land registered. This means properties that have not changed hands since the end of the 90s may be missing from records.

“Since we rely on Land Registry cadastral data, these omissions restricted our ability to pinpoint thousands of development sites with great potential,” explains Chris Rowland-Smith, Managing Director of Lumiere Property.

“We are really excited at the prospect of using our new AI software; it’s an incredibly smart application and a significant breakthrough. We’re used to working in areas of dense housing stock so the 15% of missing titles accounts for a substantial number of as yet untapped sites,” says Rowland-Smith.

In order to address the current data gaps, Lumiere Property applied the latest AI and deep-learning algorithms to estimate the title bounds for residential addresses across England and Wales. Deep learning involves training an algorithm using over a million examples of known title boundaries, on specialised hardware. Once the algorithm is trained, Lumiere Property can present it with examples where the boundary is not known and enable it to estimate these and build a totally new database on top of the existing Land Registry-registered titles.

“There are many other examples where identifying missing titles can be of benefit, including large scale analytics and conveyancing – the scope is huge!” Rowland-Smith adds. As well as identifying residential properties for purchase and development, Lumiere Property also has the ability to provide a sophisticated site-finding service for commercial and public organisations such as senior living developers and borough councils with existing asset registers they wish to unlock value from.

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Andrew is a charming person that I am pleased to do business with. Selling my house with Lumière Property means I hand over the keys at the end of the process. I won’t have lots of exhausting viewings and have to be here all the time and I think that’s marvellous.